Dark Skies - Blu-ray Review

'The struggle of Lacy to sell houses and Daniel to get a job in the construction industry has clear economic crisis overtones, but that's all they ever are.'

In a golden age for TV, it is tempting to forget that there were good shows before Game Of Thrones started blowing up/having sex with everything in sight. One such show was The X-Files, whose influence has been long and notorious. The most recent example of The X-Files' reach and prime example of why it was such a good show? Dark Skies.

Playing like a mild cross between Chris Carter's creation and Paranormal Activity, Scott Stewart's paranoid Horror/Thriller has implants, weird activity, a sceptic/non-sceptic double act and even a single man representation of The Lone Gunmen, in the shape of J.K. Simmons who shows up late on to explain everything. Oh yes, a bit like The X-Files on occasions, Dark Skies also has plenty of lazy writing.

It makes for a pretty un-involving process towards the eventual tirade of exposition and a biblical final supper even Scully would think twice about before taking part. Along the way there are some nice sequences, most notably whenever a glimpse of a 'grey' appears on screen (watch for the first time, when Lacy (Keri Russell) spots one in a bedroom) but they happen mainly in isolation, whilst the rest of the plot gets on with being boring.

If Dark Skies is 'about' anything further than big-headed grey men then there's plenty of hints here that it is about the breakdown of good ol' family life in the US of A. The struggle of Lacy to sell houses and Daniel (Josh Hamilton) to get a job in the construction industry has clear economic crisis overtones, but that's all they ever are. Much, much better extraterrestrial films have explored family breakdown ideas to a much fuller extent (E.T. anyone?) and the economic crisis angle just doesn't work if you're not going to push it eloquently and properly. Stewart opts for neither.

Oh, and, if you want your film to not be compared to a TV show that did this sort of thing infinitely better? Don't have one of your characters say, 'I want to believe', hey?

Dark Skies is out on UK Blu-ray and DVD from Monday.

By Sam Turner. Sam is editor of Film Intel, and can usually be found behind a keyboard with a cup of tea. He likes entertaining films and dislikes the other kind. He's on Google+, Twitter and several places even he doesn't yet know about.